In the midst of the proliferation of energy-consuming AI data centers emerging like mushrooms in small towns across the United States, the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is muddying the waters and sowing division within American society.
The CCP regime is exploiting tensions surrounding water usage, electricity demands, and environmental costs in an attempt to use old tricks – selling influence and spreading false propaganda – to widen the divide within American society.
Residents of American towns are strongly dissatisfied with the construction of data centers in their communities, a sentiment that cannot be ignored. According to data from Data Center Watch (DCW), based in Washington DC, resistance from local residents has already led to at least 75 data center projects valued at around $130 billion being halted or delayed in the first quarter of 2026.
While analysts caution against attributing all opposition to data centers to Beijing, they acknowledge that the potential risks of CCP interference behind the scenes continue to be significant and increasing.
“Whether it’s energy issues or water resource problems, it is definitely a real problem,” said Cleo Paskal, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) based in Washington DC, in an interview with The Epoch Times. “But at the same time, it’s a reality that CCP forces are very willing to exacerbate. The CCP’s goal is not to seek any solutions, but to cripple America,” she added.
CCP’s interference actions include using American artificial intelligence (AI) technology to create issues for its own purposes.
Chinese operators have used a virtual private network (VPN) to infiltrate ChatGPT, a chatbot inaccessible in mainland China. They instructed the bot to generate English comics and comments, suggesting that the construction of AI centers has raised electricity bills for ordinary American families.
In a report from OpenAI, based in San Francisco, published in June, a comic depicted an American family of three confronting a man in a suit holding a sack full of cash and a cigar. The head of the family angrily says, “This isn’t fair!” Subsequently, some seemingly fake accounts spread such content widely on social media.
OpenAI referred to this operation as the “Data Center Bandwagon campaign.”
In the report, the company stated that Chinese influence operators are “testing various claims related to AI infrastructure – which is the basis for America’s technological leadership, economic growth, and the construction of a broader democratic AI ecosystem.”
Maintaining leadership in the field of AI is crucial for the CCP regime. The CCP’s “14th Five-Year Plan,” passed in March of this year, emphasizes promoting the integration of AI into various sectors of the economy. On July 17th, CCP leader Xi Jinping outlined a new global AI order, in which China will lead the development of AI technology training and cooperation for developing countries.
Retired US Marine Corps Colonel Grant Newsham stated that the Chinese authorities view AI as a “battle.” He has written a book titled “When China Attacks: A Warning to America” (2023), warning about CCP’s gray zone tactics.
“They want to win, they want to defeat us,” Newsham told The Epoch Times. He pointed out that for the CCP to defeat America, it means ensuring that America falls behind China, and ideally, the US would even rely on China.
Newsham conducted research on green energy as an example.
Over the past few decades, the global transition to clean energy has resulted in a significant dependency on China, as they produce around 80% of the world’s solar components and batteries, as well as 70% of wind turbine equipment. The extraction process for various key electric vehicle batteries is also primarily carried out in China.
Newsham pointed out that now the CCP government aims to achieve similar goals using AI.
Currently, the operatives arranged by CCP seem to be still testing their fake social media accounts, but analysts and OpenAI warn that their operations are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
Scott McGregor, a former intelligence advisor to the Canadian federal government, stated that Beijing is not seeking immediate results.
“It’s a gradual process,” he described to The Epoch Times.
Nicolas Chaillan, a US cybersecurity expert and former Chief Software Officer for the Air Force, emphasized the importance of scale, as AI is enabling China to conduct influence activities on a large scale.
“If you can make a sound and have enough volume, then you can control public opinion, and truly instill your ideas into people’s minds,” he explained to The Epoch Times. “The louder the sound, the more repetitions, the more people will believe.”
The CCP has resorted to various tactics to compete for dominance in the AI field, conducting more open propaganda offensives alongside secretive network operations.
In recent months, CCP’s official media has published dozens of articles in both Chinese and English, mocking the hurdles the US faces in AI and boasting of China’s successful development in the field. Many of these articles echo the rhetoric of fake social media accounts.
This pattern seems to have attracted attention in Washington. In a policy event in May, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum hinted that some radical activities against data centers were driven by “foreign dark money.”
“These activities are neither natural nor initiated by locals,” he stated.
Several Republican lawmakers have pointed out that Neville Roy Singham, an American businessman residing in Shanghai, has funded a network that consistently echoes Beijing’s official stance. Singham is currently under investigation by a federal grand jury for suspected illegal money transfers.
Groups associated with him have previously come under congressional scrutiny for inciting domestic protests in the US. Some of these groups openly defend Beijing’s strategic interests, condemn the US in Chinese state media, and organize courses praising China’s socialist practices.
Federal Representative Jason Smith is focused on the roles these individuals play in instigating protests against data centers.
During a congressional hearing on CCP influence held by the House Ways and Means Committee in June, Representative Jason Smith stated: “The CCP wants to dominate the future of AI. Clearly, they are nefariously trying to exploit American’s legitimate concerns, creating discord in our backyard. The only purpose is for them to seize this technological advantage.”
Representative Smith vowed to “trace the flow of funds and thoroughly investigate the source of funds in the dark web.”
In late July, Smith issued subpoenas to three non-profit organizations associated with Singham, alleging that tens of millions of dollars had flowed through Singham to these organizations.
However, some opposing voices assert that the core issue they are concerned about is the lack of transparency in the government.
“People want a say in decisions that will impact their lives for decades to come,” Elizabeth Hutchings, communication manager for Alliance for a Better Utah, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, told The Epoch Times. The organization has been opposed to a large data center project in the state of Utah. The organization denies any interference from foreign forces in their work.
Legislators and experts emphasize that community-led opposition movements and CCP’s influence activities are two distinct issues.
“People have legitimate concerns about data centers and AI, but we should separate this discussion from the malicious influence of CCP forces,” explained David Shedd, former acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to The Epoch Times.
He stated that inciting divisions among Americans “totally aligns with CCP regime’s own interests.”
McGregor concurred with this, stating that the CCP regime is attempting to catch up with the US in the field of AI and will try everything to slow down America’s progress.
Reporters were unable to reach Singham for comment.
Creating division by exploiting contradictions in open societies is a common tactic of the CCP regime.
In 2021, as the United States grappled with anti-Asian hate crimes, Beijing viewed this as an opportunity to shift public attention away from its own domestic human rights issues. Chinese diplomats and official media outlets criticized the US as hypocritical and praised China’s governance model.
“They tell a half-story or modify a story to such an extent that distorts the truth,” said Stephen Nagy, a professor of politics and international studies at the International Christian University in Tokyo, to The Epoch Times. “AI will only exacerbate these phenomena, making them more intense.”
Ethan Tu, a Taiwanese software engineer who founded Taiwan AI Labs, uses AI technology to track coordinated influence actions. He stated that in most cases, the aim of these actors is to erode public trust and push both sides to extremes, eliminating space for rational and objective dialogue.
“When democracy is paralyzed, people might think, ‘Democracy is just chaos, it’s not much different from China,'” he explained to The Epoch Times.
In the field of AI, the CCP regime is employing a series of tactics to obtain the coveted AI advantage and use it as a springboard to launch an offensive against the US. In areas where they lack technological prowess compared to the US, they seek to steal American technology, smuggle chips through third countries, and hinder the development of US AI infrastructure through supply chain dependencies.
A report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2025 pointed out that Beijing – the most capable competitor of the US in AI to date – is implementing a “multifaceted, national-level strategy” to replace the US as the world’s most influential AI power.
Some lawmakers expressed concerns about this.
Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Brian Mast, stated that the US is “definitely countering CCP’s influence” in the field of AI.
“At the local level in America, we are not controlled by Washington, DC. Each community can independently decide what is best for them,” he explained to The Epoch Times. “This is our grassroots governance system. However, indeed, we are truly influenced in this regard by the CCP, because it is beneficial to them if we lack computational abilities.”
Like Smith, Senator Jim Banks supports conducting a grand jury investigation into Singham. He said the CCP regime “should not be meddling in our American political debates at all.”
“These are important local political debates, often involving laws and policies at the local and state level, and the Chinese should not intervene in these debates. So we should crack down on their behavior and fully understand their motives,” he told The Epoch Times.
Kerry Gershaneck, a professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei, has been closely monitoring and studying the CCP’s political warfare tactics. He stated that if CCP’s scheming succeeds, it will pose an “existential” threat to the US and other democratic nations.
He told The Epoch Times that the CCP’s rulers are “far ahead of any other country in weaponizing AI.” He noted that when AI is combined with the “vast global data collection ecosystem,” the CCP regime will have the ultimate tool to export its authoritarian model and “destroy us from within.”
(Contributed by The Epoch Times reporter Sean Tseng)